THE TANA RIVER 



gle. Of course I missed him, but the roar of the shot 

 so surprised him that he came to a stand. Memba 

 Sasa passed me the Springfield, and I managed to get 

 him in the head. At the shot another flashed into 

 view, high up in the top of a tree. Again I aimed 

 and fired. The beast let go and fell like a plummet. 

 "Good shot," said I to myself. Fifty feet down 

 the colobus seized a limb and went skipping away 

 through the branches as lively as ever. In a moment 

 he stopped to look back, and by good luck I landed 

 him through the body. When we retrieved him 

 we found that the first shot had not hit him at all ! 



At the time I thought he must have been fright- 

 ened into falling; but many subsequent experiences 

 showed me that this sheer let-go-all-holds drop is 

 characteristic of the colobus and his mode of pro- 

 gression. He rarely, as far as my observation goes, 

 leaps out and across as do the ordinary monkeys, but 

 prefers to progress by a series of slanting ascents 

 followed by breath-taking straight drops to lower 

 levels. When closely pressed from beneath, he will 

 go as high as he can, and will then conceal himself 

 in the thick leaves. 



B. and I procured our desired number of colobus 

 by taking advantage of this habit as soon as we 

 had learned it. Shooting the beasts with our rifles 

 we soon found to be not only very difficult, but also 



275 



